1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a workflow executing apparatus that executes a serial workflow configured by combining a plurality of steps, a control method of the apparatus, as well as a program thereof.
2. Description of the Related Art
There exists a conventional workflow executing apparatus that configures a serial workflow by combining a plurality of processing steps and executes that workflow in an office. Furthermore, in this configuration, an e-mail containing a notification/processing request/confirmation/etc. regarding the workflow is automatically sent from the workflow executing apparatus to a user (a PC). With this setup, the workflow processing can be easily advanced by using the e-mail, without a dedicated workflow system needing to be installed in the user PC. Travel expense calculations, order requests, vacation applications, and the like can be given as examples of such a workflow.
With this setup, the user receives an e-mail from the workflow executing apparatus using an e-mail application installed in the user PC, and performs the workflow operations in accordance with the details written in the main body of the e-mail. With this type of e-mail used for workflows, identifiers such as the name of the workflow, identifiers for specifying the workflow, and the like are written into the main body, the subject, and so on of the e-mail.
The technique described hereinafter has been proposed as a technique regarding workflows and e-mails. According to this technique, an e-mail sent via an e-mail server is first received by a document server, and if that e-mail is a task-related e-mail, the e-mail data is assigned a task-related serial number and is registered in a database. The serial number is also added to the e-mail title as character string data. Furthermore, when transmitting/receiving e-mails thereafter, a Message-Id included in each e-mail is monitored in the document server, and associated e-mails regarding a task are recorded as a history of the task (see Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2001-084193).
However, the abovementioned conventional technique has the following problems, which arise when a user processes a plurality of workflows in parallel, when a large amount of time is required for a single workflow to complete, and so on.
The e-mail application on the user PC receives a plurality of e-mails transmitted from the workflow executing apparatus. At this time, it is possible that the user will experience difficulty in determining which workflow the e-mails are related to, and what time/date the related workflows are from (or continued from), based on the display provided by the e-mail application. In other words, in order to distinguish which workflow is associated with the received e-mail, it is necessary for the user to use a search function provided by the e-mail application of the PC to search for e-mails related to the same workflow, using an identifier for identifying the workflow written within the main body or the like of the e-mail as keys. For this reason, the usability of this setup for users is poor.
Meanwhile, an e-mail application normally includes functionality for sorting a list of e-mails based on the subject of the e-mails, and thus can rearrange e-mails by subject. However, when a large amount of e-mails regarding the same type of workflow are received, it is difficult to visually distinguish which e-mails are unprocessed, which e-mails have already been processed, and so on. For example, even if e-mails received due to the same workflow being repeatedly executed are sorted by subject, the results are similar to those shown in FIG. 7. In FIG. 7, a list of received e-mails is displayed, the e-mails having been arranged in order by date. For this reason, even if, for example, the user has received an e-mail indicating that a workflow has ended, the user cannot easily distinguish which workflow has ended.
The technique of Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2001-084193, proposed as a technique regarding workflows and e-mails, causes all data from an e-mail server to first pass through a document server, whereupon whether each e-mail is task-related or not is monitored and registered. With this technique, a user transmits a new e-mail, and e-mails transmitted/received by other users in response to that new e-mail are managed as a group. However, while the document server of Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2001-084193 can, in terms of memory, manage the e-mails as a group, it cannot necessarily display these e-mails as a group. This is because the subject or the like used during sorting is not necessarily a term that indicates that the e-mails in question are a group. Accordingly, although this document server technique can be applied to a user PC that receives e-mails from workflows, the technique cannot improve the usability in the user PC.